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Time for another instalment of our regular ‘Moto Photos’ stories. Tonight it’s South Africa’s turn in the spotlight; specifically Cape Town’s crack lensman, Devin Paisley. His recent shoot for local shop Hutchbilt really impressed us. So much so, we wanted to see what other goodies he had in his camera case. So here they are. Enjoy.

It’s a well-known fact that 1970s drag racing was pretty much the coolest thing that has ever graced God’s earth. And Blind Freddy could tell you that the French are as cool as all hell. And what about the Honda Dax? That thing’s cooler than James Brown doing shots of liquid nitrogen. So what happens when you combine all three? You get coolness levels approaching that of Absolute Zero. Just ask French bike builders Duke Motorcycles; after getting their hands dirty on this little Honda Dax drag bike build, they’ve probably got a case of terminal frostbite.

When champion British thoroughbred Jardine’s Lookout climbed aboard a flight bound for Australia to take on the world’s best race horses in the Melbourne Cup he brought along a buddy. Joining him on the ride was his tiny mate, 14-year-old Shetland Pony Henry; it seems even the most powerful amongst us often need a little friend. Which is exactly why when ‘Monster’ a brutish supercharged Harley Davidson by Malaysia’s Beautiful Machines was heading for the Art of Speed show they decided their high horsepower steed needed a companion too. Based on a Comel minibike ‘LIL Monster’ is all about fun times and fairy floss and ensures the big fire breathing beast is never alone in her stable.

In this, the latest installment of our series on the world’s best moto photographers, we spoke to Californian Stan Evans on his work shooting some of the world’s best customisers, riders and bikes. While you couldn’t hope to find a more down-to-earth guys, his work speaks for itself; his black and white shots of Max Hazan are some of the best we’ve ever seen. We hope you agree.

It’s not everyday you receive an email asking if you’d be interested in going to India to ride Royal Enfields across the Rajasthan desert with a film crew and a professional photographer. That’s exactly what happened at the end of last year: I received an email from a guy called Matt from Nevermind Adventures. He runs organized motorcycle adventure tours all over India. Only a fool would think about it for just a second. I thought about it for two, and replied: ‘When do we leave?’.

If there’s one thing that Burt Munro taught us, it’s to never underestimate New Zealanders in a shed. So when our mates from Auckland’s Earnest Co. said they’d been messing around with some new moto gear designs in between custom bike builds, we knew it’d be decent stuff. And it looks like we were right. So in the spirit of helping out a mate and giving a little exposure to some guys who really deserve it, here’s a quick look at their shed-made ‘Tasker’ moto work pants.

On our recent trip across the Rajasthan Desert on Royal Enfields, we were lucky enough to have all the action, all the spills and all the general lunatic hi jinx captured by Melbourne photographer Jason Lau. His take on the journey and the impressive shots he managed to capture really piqued our interest. And looking through his back catalogue is an eye-opening experience, too. The sheer number of photos in there that we’d admired before but never connected back to him is seriously impressive. Talk about a quiet achiever. So we asked him for his best 15 shots.

During our recent trip to Australia’s Broken Hill on Triumph’s Bobber, we were lucky enough to be able to work with Dean Walters, a local Melbourne photographer who seems to have quite the knack with cameras and motorcycles. We got to spend the week with him while bashing around the Aussie desert and trying not to crash bikes we didn’t own. After seeing him in action, we can say that the guy’s definitely ‘got the gift’. Watching him turn two idiots messing around in the dirt into jaw-dropping shots was a sheer pleasure to behold. So we asked him to give us his best-ever shots and a quick interview; this is what we got.

It’s 2011 and the custom bike world is beside itself with the Yamaha-based creations of one Greg Hageman, a.k.a. ‘Doc’s Chops’. From what was previously a laughably bad Yamaha Virago, Greg had built a custom that seemed to have somehow made the bike look very, very cool. At around the same time, a young New Yorker called Maxwell Hazan wheeled his very first custom bike out of a small Brooklyn shop and we all know how that turned out – mainly due to the fact that a certain photographer had the wherewithal to recognise genius when they saw it. And the person responsible for taking the photos of these bikes that changed the custom scene for ever? Meet Florida’s Erick Runyon.

Walk into any gym around the world these days and there’ll be a line up for the mirror as jacked up shirtless individuals get the perfect selfie for Instagram. But over in the distant corner, large but unassuming, is a big man who comes in everyday and gets the job done without a fuss. Imposing, all natural and capable of benching more weight than the rest of the posers could ever dream of. In the motorcycle world that individual is the Yamaha XJR1300 that still relies on classic looks and a big cube air-cooled engine to fill an important niche in the company’s line up. But Walid from Bad Winners in France decided it was time to show the juice heads what real muscle is all about and has turned this 2005 example into a brutal beast he calls The Arm Breaker.